FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS
In the summer of 1892 there was a notable sight in the Bavarian city of
Munich. The richest goldsmith of the city of breweries displayed in his
window a crown, sceptre, orb and sword, which he had made to the order
of the Prince of Bulgaria. The rich jewels with which the regalia were
decked were the family gems of the Princess Clementine, who had
presented them to her pet son, in anticipation of the recognition by
the Powers which both fondly believed to be imminent.
But the anticipation was not realized, and Ferdinand had not even the
money to pay the goldsmith for his work. A lawsuit was initiated
against him, and at the same time the aggrieved tradesman displayed the
jewels in his shop window, where they drew a daily crowd. To stop the
scandal the Princess Clementine stepped in and footed the bill; and the
jewels were stored at her Ebenthal Palace until such time as they
should be needed—not, as a matter of fact, until after her death.
The story illustrates the long-cherished ambition of the Bulgar Czar to
reign supreme in his own realm; but that, after all, is perhaps a
comprehensible ambition for the grandson of Louis Philippe and the
descendant of Francis I. But the extent of the ambitions of the lesser
Czar is not grasped by those who think that his ambitions are bounded
by his wish to rule as the recognized sovereign of that Greater
Bulgaria which was set up by Russia through the treaty of San Stefano.
Ferdinand’s dreams are wilder by far than those wide boundaries would
justify.
In the grounds of his Euxinograd Palace at the port of Varna is a
little hill, from the crest of which can be obtained a spacious view
across the Black Sea. On the summit the Prince caused to be erected a
throne, and to this spot he would daily repair when spending his
leisure at Euxinograd. Seated on this throne he would sit for hours
gazing over the calm waters toward Constantinople; looking inscrutably
out toward the Byzantium which was for so long the centre of Eastern
power and the capital of the Empire of the East.
Not long before the outbreak of the great war he employed a well-known
Vienna specialist in heraldry and genealogy to trace his descent, and
to endeavour to link up his family with that of the ancient Bulgarian
Czars. All things are possible to a Vienna specialist with a royal
commission, and it is not surprising to learn that the antiquarian was
entirely successful.
Ferdinand, it appears, traces his descent, in common with the Kaiser,
to Philip of Hohenzollern, who married a descendant of the Byzantine
Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Now Alexius had as wife Irene, who was
daughter of Maria, the only daughter of the Bulgarian Czar Samuel. What
better claim, then, than that of Ferdinand, not only to the Czardom of
Bulgaria, but to imperial sway in the new Eastern realm of which the
modern Byzantium must inevitably be the capital.
Indeed Constantinople has gained a hold of his fertile imagination that
may account for the supreme and audacious treachery of his conduct
during the past few years. He dreams, this Prince of a pot-house, of
erecting his throne in the city which he last visited wearing the red
fez of vassalage. The dream is no new one. When the great assembly had
gathered at Tirnovo to witness the apostasy of the infant Boris,
Ferdinand’s uncle, the witty old Duc d’Aumale, ventured on some
satirical congratulations. “I congratulate you, Ferdinand,” he said,
“your son is now orthodox, it will be your turn next.”
But Ferdinand, wrapped in his megalomania, failed to detect the
jocularity. “I have been thinking about this for some time,” he
answered earnestly; “I have fixed my baptism in a church, and in
circumstances, which will certainly reconcile you to my act.”
“And where, and under what circumstances will it happen?”
“It will take place at St. Sophia, under the thunder of Bulgarian guns.”
This conversation, it must be remembered, took place soon after the
fall of Stambuloff and the murder of that strong man, which removed
from the path of Ferdinand the only obstacle in Bulgaria to the
unchecked attainment of his wishes in that country. It is to be borne
in mind as the predominating motive in all his acts from that time
forward. It shaped his foreign policy, and affords the sole key to his
method of dealing with the internal affairs of Bulgaria.
As I shall make clear later, it was the motive which caused him to form
with his neighbours the Balkan League, ostensibly to free the
Christians in Macedonia and Thrace from Turkish oppression. The real
motive became apparent after the battle of Lule Burgas, when the Turks
fled before the victorious Bulgarians.
When the Turks finally came to bay at the lines of Chatalja, a peace
whereby the Allies would have gained all they ostensibly sought was
offered by Kiamil Pasha. Ferdinand, without consulting his Allies,
rejected it; and against the wish of his Army Council began the attack
of Chatalja, which proved so disastrous to the Bulgarian arms.
Speaking in the Sobranje in 1914, the Bulgarian delegate Kosturoff
said, “As was shown later on, the only purpose was to enter
Constantinople. The ambition, the boundless ambition, was to place the
Cross on the Mosque of St. Sophia, in order that history should some
day write, ‘Simeon came once beneath the walls of Constantinople, but
the Greek women broke his head there. It was Czar Ferdinand who entered
Constantinople as victor.’”
This ambition of Ferdinand’s, to possess Constantinople and make it the
capital of a new Bulgarian Empire, has only to be grasped to enable the
reader to gain a full comprehension of the policy which has thrown
Ferdinand into the field of battle on the side of the Central Powers,
and allied the Bulgarians in arms with their ancient and hereditary
enemies the Turks. It must be remembered that the difficulty of
disposing of Constantinople when the Turks shall have been deprived of
its possession has remained for nearly a century the sole reason why
the crescent still floats over the minarets of Stamboul. The inevitable
end of Ottoman rule in Europe, though hastened by the fatal blunder
which threw Turkey into the fray with the Teuton races, was none the
less inevitable in the sight of all thinking men long before the first
Balkan war.
Men all over Europe conceived a new Eastern Empire, which was to spring
from the union of the Christian races in the Balkans. It was to have
its centre in Constantinople, the centre of a beneficent rule, where
all the Balkan States were working to a common end to remove from their
countries the reproach that is held in the oft-repeated phrase, the
“Plague-spot of Europe.”
Russia saw it as the triumph of the Slav race. France saw the Latin
idea conquering Teuton “kultur.” Great Britain dreamed of the victory
of Christianity over the heathen. And all the time Ferdinand stood by
his throne at Euxinograd, and dreamed and schemed and plotted. Races
and creeds alike were of no account to Ferdinand, the man of no race
who had committed apostasy in the person of his own infant son. He, the
fop, the scented darling of French drawing-rooms, saw himself the heir
to Constantine, the successful imitator of the great Bulgarian Czars
Samuel and Simeon. They were stopped only at the walls of
Constantinople; but Ferdinand did not plan to stop there.
That insane ambition governed every step he has taken for fifteen
years. It brought him and Bulgaria perilously near to annihilation in
the Balkan wars. It made treaties for him the veriest scraps of paper.
It moulded his conduct and dictated his alliances.
How he has conducted the Bulgarian people along the path which leads
away from their racial ties as well as from the obligations imposed
upon them by their indebtedness for their very existence as a nation
will shortly be told.
But first it will be interesting to know something more of the man who
is obsessed by this wild ambition, always unattainable, but rendered
doubly unattainable now by the deeds of men more ambitious, more
unscrupulous, and a hundred times more powerful than he.
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FERDINAND THE FUTILE
“_The Prince is undoubtedly a clever man; but he wastes his cleverness
on petty matters._”—STAMBULOFF.
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